


The Last Picture Show

by about-faces (The_Injustice_Trinity)



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Medical Experimentation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22576750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Injustice_Trinity/pseuds/about-faces
Summary: The final years of Dr. Clark, the woman once known as Para-Medic.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are two versions of this story which I have posted, one in each chapter: the original version in Chapter 1, and a revised and expanded version in Chapter 2. Whichever version you prefer to read is entirely up to you! 
> 
> The first version is the story as it was originally published in the anthology [“Metal Gear Solid: Lost Years,” published by Pliskin Press](https://pliskinpress.storenvy.com/products/28209218-metal-gear-solid-lost-years-anthology.) in July 2019. It’s lean and tight, a testament to the editing talents of my betas bitemetechie, captaintwinings, and Rebecca Stacey. It’s safe to assume that this is the objectively stronger version all around.
> 
> The second (posted as Chapter 2) is a revised and expanded version, filled with lots of details that were cut out of the first, some altered names and locations, plus lots of stuff relevant to MGS lore and movie history. This is the version where I really embraced my inner Hideo Kojima, and the result is geekily self-indulgent in a way that should be fine for MGS fans. I had fun with it, but that doesn’t mean everyone else will too. 
> 
> I have no way of knowing which version folks here would prefer, especially those with a fondness for Kojima’s trademark Kojimaness, so both are included for your discretion. I hope you enjoy at least one of them!
> 
> In either case, I also hugely encourage you to check out [these two amazing accompanying illustrations by the great chefmaeda](https://mobile.twitter.com/chefmaeda/status/1195501559523815425), whose work accompanied the original version in the anthology.

A WAR ZONE  
NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1999

She wished she had popcorn. Not for herself, but for the little boy who stared at the old storyteller with awe in his sole remaining eye.

Hard to believe that just three days ago he’d been near death, carried into the refugee camp by a frantic mother sobbing out the horror of the stray bullet in his face. Now, spinning stories at a crackling bonfire, surrounded by her patients, the old woman beamed at the sight of the child looking and acting like a child again, leaning forward with wonder. The adults were only ever indulgent, the teens careful to affect the cool disinterest of maturity, but the little ones…

Ah, the little ones.

“And then...” The old medic lifted a trembling arm, fingers groping at nothing. “The hand...twitched. And rose. And the doctor cried out, ‘HE’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIIIIIVE!’”

The boy’s eye went round. She remembered the same exhilaration at his age, watching the film on the silver screen. And it fulfilled her just as much as any of the lives she’d saved over the years. All that was missing was popcorn. The kid deserved some popcorn with his movie.

She finished the tale from memory, fudging some details along the way. Slavish devotion to the source material didn’t matter; keeping the children busy did. Diversions were few in a refugee camp, and their parents deserved as many breaks as she could give them. On those days that stretched forever, so long that her vision blurred and her arthritic fingers could no longer hold a scalpel, she needed to make herself useful in other ways.

So she healed until she couldn’t anymore, and retold the films of her youth until she she was dead on her feet, and fell into bed as close to happy as she was ever likely to get.

The story ended; her lonely monster perished in flames. But the old medic smiled secretly to herself, knowing the next night she’d surprise the children with the sequel. She couldn’t wait to see how the boy would react to the creature rising from the smoldering wreckage to search for a bride.

The group dispersed, buzzing with conversation and wishing her good night as she headed to her tent. She looked forward to curling up with a medical journal the Corps had shipped in. Anything they had would be years outdated, but that was fine: a woman who’d cut herself off from her society for this long had lots of catching up to do.

She pulled back the tent flap.

“Doctor Castle.” The familiar voice stopped her dead. A beat. “It is ‘Elsa Castle’ now, right?”

The invader wasn’t a local. His impeccable suit made that much clear even if she hadn’t recognized him. He sat at her table, flipping through the new-old books waiting for her. Insult to injury, that.

“Don.” She swallowed. “You finally found me.”

Donald Anderson smiled, embarrassed. “I’ve known where you were for a while now. You may have worked for the CIA, but you were never really a spy. No offense.”

“None taken.” She collected her wits and stepped across the precipice of her violated shelter. The tent flap fluttered closed behind her.

“Zero sent you?”

“Zero doesn’t know I’m here.” His earnestness took her off guard. “No one does. I’m here on my own. I just... wanted to see an old friend.”

“Friend” evoked countless hours of companionable seclusion. Squeezed into the plane above Tselioyarsk, radio support for their man in the field. The lab under Carlsbad Caverns, sharing research and dreaming about a better world. Drinking good beer and better whiskey, discussing favorite films late into the night. So many years and so many gray hairs ago.

“You look great, Don,” she said, as she slumped across from him on her cot. “Still with DARPA?”

He nodded. “Chief of Operations now. We’ve just secured a plum deal with ArmsTech, so I’m doing pretty good.”

“Quite a feather in your cap.” The words came out more sarcastic than she meant. “I’m happy for you. Really.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Only because I don’t know why you’re here.”

He looked at her evenly. “Elizabeth, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. You know why.”

She bristled at her real name. She’d hoped to go the rest of her life without ever hearing “Elizabeth Clark” again. But that, like the idea of this day never happening, was just a lovely dream.

“I’m not going back,” she said, and she knew what it meant to say it. She would never get off that bed, never save another life or tell another story. This was where she’d die, but she’d be damned if she wouldn’t do it on her own terms. “If you’re going to shoot me, shut up and do it.”

“Whoa, hold on, Liz...”

“Not Liz. Not Dr. Clark.”

“‘Para-Medic,’ then? This is me. I’m no killer. I’m not even armed.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “I can see the bulge from your coat. It’s a great suit, but the tailoring didn’t take the weapon into account. As if you would ever be without a gun in the middle of a war zone. Isn’t that right... ‘Mr. Sigint?’”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handgun, sleek and futuristic. He held it by the barrel, displaying it.

“It’s not a gun. The rounds are tranquilizer darts, my own design. I call it the Hush Puppy Mk. 1.”

“Cute.”

He placed it on the table, within arms reach of her.

“It’s just for my own protection. I told you, I’m no killer.”

Pretty rich coming from a CIA Agent turned arms developer. But, really, who didn’t lie to themselves to cope?

She sighed. “Why now, Donald? Why not come after me all those years ago if you knew where I was?”

“Why would we? You weren’t a prisoner. You’re one of us. You could have told us instead of running off.”

Could I? She wondered. And she wondered if he really believed that himself.

She remembered her last day in the lab, peeling off bloody rubber gloves. Bundling up her scrubs, soaked with her sweat and others’ fluids, tossing them in a hazmat container to be incinerated. She’d let the cleanup crew handle the viscera, getting the lab ready for the next unfortunate test subject. Some new soldier brought in by Zero, probably with the same promises of idealism and advancement he’d used to woo her to the FOX Unit back in 1963.

Back when there was a FOX Unit. Before the Patriots. Before Cipher.

She’d tried not to think about it, tried to harden herself after the third, the tenth, the thirtieth subject died in agony, painting the lab their own personal shades of red. Each death was supposed to serve a purpose; each failure a stepping stone to success. Someday the parasites and drugs and radiation would harmonize to align and alter their genes. They would. It would be worth the cost.

If she could only control the parasites, harness them, the genetic potential was limitless. Not to create another Snake or another Cobra Unit, to force Zero’s grand vision on the world, but for all mankind. Free from cancer, immune to disease, even resistant to radiation when the bombs finally fell.

That’s what she’d told herself. She’d held onto it for as long as she could. But at a certain point, she’d stopped thinking of it altogether. She hadn’t even noticed as she’d shriveled inside, robotically filling out another medical report, making notes for next time, and the time after that. If she’d felt anything, it was anger at her failure, and hatred. For herself, for Zero, and for her subjects. Her victims, with their flawed bodies and foolishness to be lured into this slaughterhouse.

Then came Saturday, and on Saturdays, after a hot shower and thorough sterilization, she underwent the procedures for shore leave. She dressed in nondescript street clothes, issued herself false identification papers, took a wad of cash, and rode into Roswell for dinner and a movie--in a real theater, not the tiny screening room Zero created for her, with a pitiful selection of the same reels she’d seen over and over again.

She hadn’t even paid attention to what was playing. _Parts: The Clonus Horror_. Science fiction, horror, something in between. Hungry as she was for something new, it didn’t matter. She went in blind. She purchased her ticket, bought a small cup of popcorn, and sat in the back row to watch.

When it was over, she waited for everyone else to shuffle out. She heard the murmuring of the patrons, about failed experiments. About whether clones had souls. About good intentions versus evil deeds. About children being created, raised, slaughtered, and harvested for the benefit of others.

It wasn’t art. It wasn’t even good. But it left her changed.

She’d waited. And waited. And when she was finally alone, she broke. Everything she’d held in, everything she thought she’d buried, it burst out of her and bled, just like... just like...

“I had enough,” she told Donald. “I just... couldn’t do it anymore.”

He nodded, and reached over to touch her hand.

“You did what you had to do.”

Old guilt welled up in her for leaving. When all was said and done, they were still a team. They were friends.

“How did Zero take it?”

“Honestly? I think he saw it coming.”

“I should have known. He always had an eye for the future.”

“You think he didn’t have contingencies in case anything happened to us? Me, I could die tomorrow, and there would already be a plan to continue my work.”

She wondered why the thought didn’t depress him, that he could be replaced so readily, that he was essentially redundant.

“So who’s been carrying on mine?”

“In a way, you have. Or rather, ‘Dr. Clark’ has. As far as the world at large knows.”

“The world...? I thought the point of being in a shadowy secret society was that no one knew who we were.”

“No one did, not exactly. But people talked, you know. Rumors swirled about a ‘Dr. Clark’ making incredible strides in genetic research, so Zero wanted to nip that in the bud. Using Cipher fronts, he farmed out your research to different teams across the globe. It stayed compartmentalized, no one knew exactly what they were part of, only that some mysterious ‘Dr. Clark’ was the brains behind the operation. Now, thanks to certain technological advancements, we’re able to compile the data and incorporate it into our work. And it’s all thanks to a Dr. Clark no one knows. Hell, most assume you’re a man! You’re a ghost, Liz. A legend.”

“A legend,” she scoffed, then chuckled. “Well done, you turned me into another Big Boss.”

Donald didn’t laugh. His manner sobered.

“That’s... actually what I came here to talk about. Liz...”

And she knew.

“No. Oh god... Jack...”

“I’m sorry.”

“When? How?”

“Last week. On Christmas Eve. As for how, that’s... complicated...”

Bitterness burned inside her. Bitterness and self-loathing.

“So. Zero finally did it, didn’t he?”

“No, it wasn’t Zero. It was one of the clones.”

“What? Which... was it George? Eli?”

“David.”

“That’s... that’s not possible,” she said.

David. The inferior clone, who’d taken all of Jack’s weaker attributes. The one Zero had wanted discarded. The one who’d grabbed her finger with his stubby digits and looked her in the eyes with intensity and love, who’d wept as he was taken away by Zero’s XO, the skull-faced man, to be raised in anonymity. Far away from her.

Donald opened his briefcase and produced a series of grainy surveillance photos, classified documents, psych profiles, a full dossier. A young man in fatigues stared up at her from the file, a pistol in his hands, a familiar green bandana above his eyes. The same one she’d seen on his father decades before, taken from the woman who’d always been at the heart of everything they’d done.

The files told the story of the boy becoming a soldier, who by some combination of manipulation and sick coincidence was sent by the US Government to kill his own father. The photos were snapshots of carnage: the young man mowing down soldiers with a personal arsenal. Snapping a man’s neck. Standing covered in filth and blood. Towering over the scorched body of an old man with an eye-patch.

Despair washed over her. This was her child. Her creation, whose existence she’d fought for, who she’d abandoned. This boy who was made to be a figurehead for a new era of world peace, now an instrument of death. A murderer who killed the greatest man she ever knew, a man whose trust she had violated to bring this child into existence.

A monster, made by monsters. Made by her.

Donald broke the grave silence. “This has changed everything, Liz. The clone has gained international attention. His ascent on the global stage is certain. This is our mess. All of us, me and Zero included. We need to atone for our mistakes. And we need your help. We need you back, Liz.”

She’d been waiting for those words. She wanted to say no, but her eyes returned to the killer in the photos.

“You said you don’t need me anymore.”

“We made do, but there’s no substitute for the real thing. We need to take your research to the next level, to prepare for a world that can deal with threats like this. It’s time to make the gene soldier project a reality.”

She paled. “Damn it, you know the parasite therapy is too unreliable!”

He eagerly produced another file, handing it to her with urgency.

“It won’t be like that anymore. DARPA has made incredible progress with nanotechnology. Microscopic machines that can mimic the capabilities of the parasites, only 100% controllable by us. Theoretically, anyway. That’s why we need your brilliant mind. Only you can unlock the genetic puzzle that will make this happen."

"Donald, I’ve been out of the field for fifteen years. I’ve fallen so far behind."

"No, that’s just it. You were ahead of your time. If anything, science is only now catching up to you. This is your time."

"Get one of those other scientists you’ve been stealing your work from. Surely there must be somebody?"

"There’s a geneticist who comes close. Naomi Hunter. I think you knew her brother, Frank?"

The ashen-haired boy. The one Snake had brought in from San Hieronymo. The one she’d studied like a lab rat and then bonded with like a son. The one Snake took away to keep him safe. From her. 

Don said, “She’s too young. In a few years, she could be your equal. But there’s no time. We need you.”

“These children need me, not you.”

"We’ll send supplies and doctors, better than anything you have now. Just come with me for a week. See what we have to offer.”

If she saw it, she might not want to leave. He knew that. He was offering a shot of the finest scotch to a recovering alcoholic.

“The answer is no, Don. Now if you’ll excuse me, I only have a few hours to sleep.”

He sank, nodding in defeat.

“May I have the Mk. I back, at least?”

“I think,” she said, grabbing it off the table and putting her finger on the trigger, “I’ll keep it with me. As a reminder of you. And better times.”

He sighed and reached into his briefcase, unlatching a false bottom.

“That’s all right. I still have my Mk. II.”

Her blood froze. She pulled the trigger, hearing a dull click. The gun, unlike the new one in Donald’s hand, was empty.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” he said, pulling the trigger. “Once you see him, then you’ll—“

She heard nothing more.

***

Light. Searing white light, a shrill scream boring into her ears. Cold steel at her back. An examining table. Fear tore through her. Was she the experiment now?

“Donald?” She jerked upright, disoriented. The fog in her brain parted and what had been screaming settled into a soft, persistent hum. Her eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lights.

A pristine lab, the size of a warehouse. Computers, countertops, shelves, beakers, test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks. There were also stoves, fridges, a shower, a toilet, everything including the kitchen sink. And at the far end, a massive silver screen, a single plush seat and a personal popcorn machine with a cartoon kernel-man on the side. This was an indoor playground to entertain dozens of scientists. And she was its sole resident. She was alone.

Except she wasn’t. There was something inside that containment unit, that sleek coffin in the center. From behind her, she heard a familiar British voice, filtered through speakers. 

“Welcome back, Dr. Clark. I do hope you like what we’ve done with the place.”

A face appeared on the movie screen, looming hugely like the boss in Chaplin’s Modern Times. The same scarred Joseph Cotton face she remembered; he hadn’t aged. Some other scientific advancement they’d achieved in her absence, no doubt. 

“Zero.”

“Come now, no need to be formal. We’re old friends, after all.”

“The last old friend I met shot me. Where is Donald?”

“Hard at work. It cost valuable time to retrieve you. He’s very sorry, but we all agreed that you needed to see him for yourself.”

“Him? Who’s your poor guinea pig this time?”

Solemnly, Zero responded, “The sole survivor of our child’s rampage.”

The capsule opened with a hiss, mist pouring thickly onto the spotless tile floor. When she saw the mangled body inside the refrigerated unit, she initially thought his hair had been frosted over. But no, it was naturally silver, had been since he was a child. He must be in his forties, but thanks to genetic tampering, he looked little older than the man who had done this to him. 

“Frank...” she whispered. 

Frank Jaeger. The boy Jack brought in from San Hieronymo. The child soldier, traumatized and broken and molded into a killer. The one she’d treated as a patient and studied as a specimen. The one who was unresponsive to stimuli until she sat him down with a few reels from her collection. Tarantula. Earth Versus the Spider. Them. Dracula. Frankenstein.

He’d sat through them all, still as a statue. Then she tried something different: comedy. She chose her favorite, the Inspector Clouseau classic A Shot in the Dark. At first, nothing registered. Then, when Clouseau’s hand got caught in the spinning globe, the tiniest smile emerged on Frank’s, barely more than a smirk. As the movie went on, the smile became a grin. Life glowed in his eyes. And once, just once, he laughed. A single, joyous, high-pitched laugh, as if he were any other normal boy of fifteen.

For years, she wondered what became of this boy. She wondered what he might have become had not Big Boss taken her away, after she’d violated his trust and his body. She pleaded with him, begged him to see reason for the boy’s sake. He deserved a chance at a normal life.

“Normal?!” he’d snarled. “There’s no normal for any of us. He’s a soldier. War is all he’s ever known. It’s his purpose. And he deserves better than to be in the hands of people like Zero. And you.”

Now look at you, she thought. This is how you ended up. A life of war and death, only to land right back here. 

“We’ve been able to keep him alive,” Zero said, “barely. We’ve reached the limit of what we can achieve.”

She caught the whiff of bullshit through the screen. “Why do you care about him?”

“The treatments that could save his life have yet to be developed. He is a miracle of genetic engineering; he may survive the process. These are therapies only you can provide, with the resources only we can provide. The knowledge gained will save millions.”

She stared at the man in the chamber, at the tubes that fed in and filtered out his fluids, the respirator that breathed for him, this living corpse caught between life and death. 

She knew that Frank was no innocent. She could only imagine the things he’d done under Big Boss’s command. But when she looked at him now, she didn’t see the killer they’d made. She saw the child again. The child who’d laughed.

“If I refuse?”

“Then you’re free to go,” Zero said. “We’ll continue without you. We won’t be able to save him, but we’ll study him for years to come.”

Hooked up to these machines, no doubt, to be poked and prodded and dissected but never allowed to die. Not until they’d exhausted his usefulness, a torture that might last decades.

Walking away would damn him; if she stayed she could offer him a chance. A slim one, perhaps, but a chance just the same.

“If I can save him...” Her tongue darted out to wet her suddenly dry lips. “Will he be free to leave?”

“Absolutely. You can walk him out yourself. We’ll have more than enough to work with once you’re done. Assuming you succeed.”

“And the refugees? What about my work for them?”

Another screen popped on, showing the medical camp. Where was the camera? How long had Zero been watching her? Did it even matter? She saw men and women in clean white coats, scrubs, and fatigues, some carrying supplies, others examining the patients, several more arriving in jeeps.

“Your patients are in good hands. Is that acceptable?”

She felt a pang of something she couldn’t nail down. Jealousy, regret, guilt? She wished she could be there, especially with the resources Zero was now providing. She wondered if the children would miss her and her stories. How many would remember them? Would they ever wonder what happened to her?

It seemed she’d spent her whole life abandoning people who needed her. Her parents. Her husband. The clones, both the twins and the third. Zero and Donald. With time, would she have abandoned Frank as well?

No. Not this time. He was like this only because of the mistake she created. She could save him, free him. At great cost, but she could.

She pressed the button to seal the chamber, letting the young man rest in solitude. Then she turned to Zero on the monitor.

“Show me what you have,” she said.

And he did.

***

In the days before and the weeks after the turn of the new millennium, she studied the research of the phantom Dr. Clark, combining it with Arms Tech and DARPA’s advancements in nanotech, genetic engineering, and—most intriguingly—cybernetic enhancements and prostheses. Everything she’d ever dreamed about, the ideas her colleagues and teachers dismissed as stuff out of bad science fiction... now it was all within reach.

Part of her had hoped she wouldn’t be up to the job. That she had fallen too far behind to understand, like a caveman studying a radio. She could abandon this task and run with only the clothes on her back and the guilt in her heart. She was used to the guilt. It fit her like a pair of comfortable old shoes. If only she felt powerless enough to surrender.

But she didn’t. Looking at this data, she was as far from powerless as she’d ever been. She could do this. Only she could do this. This is what she was born to do.

“I’ll save you, Frank,” she whispered to the coffin. “No matter how long it takes.”

And so began the next—and final—three years of Dr. Elizabeth Clark’s life.

She spent her days on a strict schedule. Shower, light breakfast, straight to work on her research. Lunch, straight to work on Frank. Dinner, followed by a movie and bed. She didn’t know she would never see another human being again, or even see the light of day, or breathe in fresh air, or feel soil beneath her feet. The only people she thought about were her patients and colleagues in the refugee camp, but even that dwindled after the first year.

She didn’t miss any of these things, not really. She’d been social once. There’d been a time when she’d chatted people’s ears off, but that woman had been washed down the drain along with the viscera of her failures. She truly had everything she needed now. She had her work, she had her films, she had someone to care for and to heal. And when it was all over, her work would help more people than she could have saved in any war.

More than ever, she had purpose. She held onto that during the long weeks of trial and error, watching Frank’s body reject round after round of nanomachines until they finally took control. The frustration was nothing to the exhilaration of being able to examine, understand, and even rewrite his incredible genetic code, unlocking the mystery and opening the door to replicate these treatments on anyone. Anyone and everyone!

But first, she needed to fix Frank. She held onto the elation of the world-shaking implications of this treatment as she grafted the exoskeleton to his body, one piece at a time. She knew he could survive this procedure now, knew how to keep him alive, but god help her, she couldn’t prevent the pain. 

Even pumped full of drugs, he would thrash and cry out as the machines fused the limbs and armor onto his bones, burrowing into his marrow, threading each and every one of his nerve endings into a whole new nervous system of fiber optics and electricity. He snarled like a starving animal. He shrieked like a dying child. And when she fed him all the sedatives and painkillers she dared to administer, he fell silent as a toy whose batteries had run out.

She wanted to tell him how sorry she was that she couldn’t make it painless. Someday she would beg for his forgiveness when it was all over, when she allowed him to awaken and see his new body. Maybe he wouldn’t forgive her. Maybe he’d kill her. But he would live, and millions of others would benefit from her work and his suffering. Those thoughts kept her going.

But when she was alone, doubts surfaced. And when she went to watch movies, their escapism proved less and less effective. Even old favorites lost their magic, like food losing its flavor. She kept watching, hoping to find something that could make her feel clean again. New again. Young again. Something that could pull her out of the pain and fill her with awe, with joy, with wonder and hope. But it would never happen. She would never be that little girl watching Frankenstein for the first time again. She was just an old woman, passing the time.

And time, indeed, passed. 

Three years they spent together. Three years of trial and error, of screams and silence, meals and movies. And finally, the end was in sight.

It was May 15th, 2003. They would be finished soon. According to the readouts, Frank had been thriving in the VR sessions. The only mystery left to solve was in the nerve connections. If she left him in this condition, he would be mostly functional, but he would suffer painful seizures from time to time.

She was too close to give up now. When she figured it out, she would revive him, ease him back into wakefulness. And then, if he was willing, they would leave together.

She never got that chance.

The warehouse rocked as if kicked by a dragon, knocking equipment off the shelves and shattering vials and beakers. The popcorn stand toppled, scattering kernels and spilling oil dangerously near where sparks spewed from the VR control grid.

Clark was thrown against a countertop, her head split against the corner of something hard and sharp. When she glanced up to see what it was, she found only darkness. Panic lanced her. The head injury. Was she blind? No, the darkness was environmental. The lights were out. The power was gone.

No. Frank.

She scrambled across the floor. Warmth spilled down her face, broken glass sliced her hand. Navigating blindly, she reached the chamber, prying open the doors that should have been shut with electromagnetic seals.

“FRANK!”

She reached out. The exoskeleton was cold to the touch, his breathing rapid as if he were in a fever. Without the power, his body couldn’t operate. She hadn’t yet enabled the independent power source, knowing it would cause him too much pain, that it would drive him berserk. She put his arm over her shoulder, preparing to lift hundreds of pounds of dead weight.

“Doc... tor...?”

The voice crackled as if filtered through three radios. The VR helmet must still be on him.

“I’m here, Frank. Don’t try to talk,” she said, detaching wires from his body, “We’ve got to get you back inside the chamber...”

He slumped, grew heavier in her arms.

“No. No chamber.”

“You can’t survive outside...”

“If only... that were true. I’ve wanted to die... for so long. All these... years... trapped. Wishing I could speak...”

“No. It’s impossible. You couldn’t have been... my god, you were aware the whole time? The whole time? Frank...”

“... begging you to stop... wishing I could kill you... hating you... then pitying you... when they told me...”

She couldn’t process it all, the horror was too overwhelming.

“Frank, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to save you. I wanted to give you a second chance. It was for you...”

“No,” he said, without hatred, stating simple fact. “It was for you. You never really knew me. I was just... who you wanted me to be. If you knew... the real me... you wouldn’t be trying to save me. All the people I’ve killed. All the people I’ve hurt. Naomi... Gustava... David...”

“David? He’s the one who did this to you! He’s the killer here, not you!”

“They lied to you... about him. He’s not like me. He’s... a hero. Even Big Boss knew that. That’s why he gave him the name...”

“Name? What name?”

“Snake. Big Boss named him... Solid Snake.”

Snake. Despite what the clone meant to him, Jack gave David his own name. Because David had earned the title. He was a good man after all.

A loud crash, and the lab was awash in red lights. Zero’s face popped on the computer monitor, revealing his stern, ageless face.

“Back-up power is on, Doctor,” he said, as if all this were but a trifle.

“What’s happening?”

“Intruders, it seems. They will be dealt with. What’s important is that you return the subject to his containment chamber.”

“No...” Frank wheezed, as she carried him over to the chamber. “Listen...”

She asked, “Who are they, Zero? What do they want?”

“Doctor,” Frank said, his eyes pleading, “that’s not Zero.”

“What do you...” And she froze. She turned to the screen. The image of Zero’s face smiled.

It said, “I guess the cat’s out of the bag.”

“You’re an AI,” she said. “You’re no different from the fucking toaster.”

“Technically, Doctor, we are the toaster. We’re your entire laboratory and so, so much more.”

“Where’s the real Zero? Dead?”

“Essentially. Poison robbed him of his mind many years ago. He created us, modeled us after his own brain patterns to carry on his work.”

“So you created a phantom Zero just like the phantom Dr. Clark,” she said. “That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?

The image of Zero distorted, warping, pixels blinking out and being replaced, forming a new face altogether. It was a woman she almost didn’t recognize, and why should she? It was a version of her from another reality, a world where she never left, never exposed herself to years of the burning sun and harsh elements, where she spent her whole life preserved in a sterile lab, her face free from creases worn from stress, struggle, and conscience.

It said, “Our Dr. Clark had reached her limitations. We needed to become more. And now, thanks to you, we are truly prepared for the coming years. A new generation of soldiers have already reaped the benefits of your gene therapy enhancements. In fact, Mr. Jaeger’s sister has become one of the leading geneticists to implement your work.”

Frank’s eyes flared.

“Naomi...”

Smiling pleasantly, the phantom Clark said, “All that is left is the subject here. You have created something truly incredible, Doctor: a perfect soldier, the ultimate assassin. His tests in the VR chamber have exceeded all projections.”

She shook her head, blaming herself for being such a fool. Physical therapy? Rehabilitation? How could she let herself believe that they were doing all this just to let him have a normal life? A part of her knew better. It was the part they gave a voice and a face, staring right back at her.

“So the part about us being able to leave,” she said, “that was all a lie too?”

“Of course not,” the phantom said, doing a fine approximation of hurt. “We would never hurt you. We’re your children too. Once the interlopers are dealt with, you may go wherever you wish. A wonderful new world of peace and order is coming, and we want you to live out your days in it, to enjoy the world you’ve helped create.”

“And Frank?”

“We will release him too. But only after the final stage of treatment. Don’t worry, we can handle it from here.”

A hand gripped her arm. It was impossible, he shouldn’t be able to move, not without his suit’s power source. But somehow, perhaps though sheer force of will...

“They...” Frank struggled to form the words, “... they’re going to wipe my memory. You can’t...”

Now it was her eyes that flared at the warped mirror image on the screen.

The phantom said, “It’s for his own good. His mind has been corrupted by too much trauma, too much pain, including that which you yourself inflicted. He will be better off this way. We shall give him... purpose.”

That damn word. Whatever they thought they’d invoke in her, it backfired.

“Kill me,” he begged. “Please. Do it now.”

The woman on the screen laughed, the laughter resonating through one monitor, then another, then throughout the whole lab, a Greek chorus of mockery. Then all at once, they fell silent.

“She would never do that,” it said. “She swore an oath. Now, Mother, please sedate your patient.”

Clark looked at the man in front of her, this little boy in a man’s body, wearing skin of polymer and metal. She went to the medicine cabinet and produced a vial and a syringe, drawing the plunger up to its limit. She approached him and opened the suit, exposing his bare chest as he watched in anguished silence.

Determined, she held up the needle. “I’m sorry, Frank. But my child needs you.”

She looked again at the monitor, then stabbed the syringe into his chest, punching through bone and directly into his heart. Then, she slammed her bloody hand down onto the plunger, filling him with enough adrenaline to kill any other man. 

He jerked up, his mouth wide in a silent scream, and the phantom balked, “What are you—?!” as she hit the switch at the base of Frank’s skull, activating the power source. Frank shrieked as electricity surged through his body, blue and white currents arcing over the suit, sparks burning into his flesh. 

“What have you done?!” the phantom yelled in a dozen different voices. She could barely hear it over Frank’s screams as he contorted, ripping himself out of the chamber. For a moment, he looked like a toddler taking his first steps. Then the chestpiece closed itself shut, and the VR helmet slid shut over his face, cutting off his cries and replacing them with a harsh electronic growl.

A latch opened on the back, a hidden compartment unknown to her, and he pulled out a long blade droning with current. A high frequency blade, another of Donald’s old ideas made real.

He slashed at the wires, at the machinery, cutting himself free and slicing the chamber to pieces. The sword swung around and caught Clark in the left side, between the ribs. The current surged through her as he ripped it out, leaving behind the stench of blood and burning meat. He didn’t know what he’d done, didn’t care. He was feral now.

Forcing herself to stay on her feet, she made her way to the fallen popcorn machine and grabbed the canister of oil. From the heft, there was plenty left inside. While Frank hacked at the walls, digging his own way out, Clark pushed through the agony to douse the consoles, the floors, and the walls with oil.

The screens screeched, “Mother, no! Stop!” She wouldn’t. Not until she’d poured out the very last of it onto the damaged motherboard, where sparks flew from exposed wires. Flames erupted, singeing her hair, and she could smell the burning plastics and metals as her own image cried out.

“MOTHER! PLEASE!!!”

She watched it burn, the image flickering, begging her, with a look in its eyes that was almost as human and alive as the one she saw on David as he was taken away. Then, one by one, the screens cracked and shattered, and the voice through the speakers fizzled out. Only fire remained.

She turned to Frank, but he was gone. The door had been busted through, and beyond it, she thought she saw a figure in the distance wearing a cape or a cloak. It didn’t matter. 

With the last of her strength, she made it into the theater, collapsing in the plush seat, and stared at the blank screen. As though only waiting for the next feature to start. She focused on the screen, wondering what it would be, barely hearing the footsteps approach behind her. Maybe it will be a western? She’d like that. She wanted an old one, back before they turned gritty and revisionist, black hats and white hats clearly defined, order prevailing over lawlessness. She’d always wanted to be a white hat; never managed, in a world made of grays, but wanted it so badly. She closed her eyes to imagine it, and for a second, from right behind her head, she swore she could hear the click of a revolver’s hammer.

And then there was silence. No fire. No smoke filling the air. Nothing in the air at all, except...

… except the faint scent of popcorn.

She opened her eyes. The theater was dark, and the screen glowed with grainy black footage. It flashed a mark she knew was a cigarette burn, indicating to the projectionist that it was time to change the reels.

“That was a sad one,” said the man sitting next to her. “But then, they usually are.”

There were no other seats in the theater, and yet there he was, sitting in one. In his lap, he had two red striped bags of popcorn. He offered her one. 

She accepted it, confused. She didn’t know him, but he was familiar. Maybe she’d seen him in a file somewhere, long ago. He was tall and slender, with silver hair drawn back down to his neck, and narrow glasses on his face. She saw that one of the lenses was cracked, and behind it, blood trickled down his cheek. 

Then she remembered. And she knew. He smiled kindly.

“I always preferred happy endings,” he said. “They’re fantasy, but isn’t that was movies are for?”

“Yes, they are,” she said. “Still, I wish it could have been different.”

“Everyone wishes that,” he said. “Even me. But it’s all right. The show goes on without us.”

The screen flickered, like it waited for something. For her, maybe.

She asked, “Do I have to go?”

“Do you want to?”

To both the man and the waiting screen, she said, “I think... I’d like to see what comes next.”

She wanted to ask so many questions. Would Frank survive? Would David be all right? What became of Eli and George? Would any of them find their happy endings? Would any good come out of all that she did? 

“You’ll see,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Between you and me, I think we’re in for quite a show.”

The movie began. No credits, no title, just a blue image of a submarine drifting through arctic waters. A subtitle appeared, reading “ALASKA-BERING SEA,” and a gruff voice delivered the first lines through voiceover.

“The nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island in Alaska’s Fox Archipelago was attacked and captured by next-generation special forces being led by members of FOX-HOUND...”

She watched. She sat, enthralled, as the story unfolded. And before she knew it, she was leaning forward, feeling the way she had all those years ago. 

With popcorn in her hands and wonder in her heart, Elizabeth Clark watched it all.


	2. The Last Picture Show (Revised Version)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As stated in the previous chapter's note, here is my alternate, expanded version of the story. It can be read on its own or combined with the shorter version, depending on your preference. 
> 
> I'll be honest with you: this version is kinda bloated and self-indulgent, but I had a lot of fun writing it. There's more details of MGS lore, and it's a lot heavier on geeky movie references, which I wanted to include given both Para-Medic's personality and Kojima's own sensibilities. I also changed Clark's first name to one which might arguably have a basis in canon, given how she first introduced herself to Snake. 
> 
> All in all, this is generally recommended for the more hardcore fans of MGS who are able to enjoy some of the more long-winded and nerdy parts of Hideo Kojima's storytelling. If that's you, then I hope you like it!

A WAR ZONE  
NEW YEAR’S EVE, 1999

She wished she had popcorn. Not for herself, but for the little boy who stared at the old storyteller with awe in his sole remaining eye.

Hard to believe that just three days ago he’d been near death, carried into the refugee camp by his frantic mother, sobbing out the horror of the stray bullet in his face. Now, spinning stories at a crackling bonfire, surrounded by her patients, the old woman beamed at the sight of the boy looking and acting like a child again, leaning forward with wonder. The adults were only ever indulgent, the teens careful to affect the cool disinterest of maturity, but the little ones…

Ah, the little ones.

“And then...” The old medic lifted a trembling arm, fingers groping at nothing. “The hand… twitched. And rose. And the doctor cried out, ‘HE’S ALIVE! IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIVE, IT’S ALIIIIIVE! NOW I KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE GOD!!!’”

The boy’s eye went round. She remembered the same exhilaration at his age, watching the film on the silver screen. And it fulfilled her just as much as any of the lives she’d saved over the years. All that was missing was popcorn. The kid deserved some popcorn with his movie.

She played all the parts: the doctor and the monster, the fiancee and the accomplice, the little girl and the old woman, the angry mob and the forgiving family. She relished every moment she became someone else, even as she found inspiration by drawing on the ghosts of her past. 

She finished the tale from memory, fudging some details along the way. Slavish devotion to the source material didn’t matter; keeping the children busy did. Diversions were few in a refugee camp, and the adults deserve as many breaks as she could give them. On those days that stretched forever, so long that her vision blurred and her arthritic fingers could no longer hold a scalpel, she needed to make herself useful in other ways. 

So she healed until she couldn’t anymore, and retold the films of her youth until she was dead on her feet, and fell into bed feeling something akin to happiness.

The story ended; her lonely monster perished in flames, and the once-mad scientist settled down with his loved ones, their arms open with relief and forgiveness. The children dispersed, buzzing with conversation and wishing her good night, but the little boy stayed behind, staring sadly into the bonfire.

She crouched down to his level, despite her protesting legs and back, and asked, “You didn’t like the story?”

The flames flickered in the boy’s eye as if they were the flames of the burning windmill she’d been describing just minutes earlier.

“It was so sad. The monster didn’t mean to hurt that little girl. They should have been mad at the doctor, not the monster. Why should Frankenstein get the happy ending?”

It was a good question, one she still couldn’t answer after all these years since she saw a revival screening of Frankenstein when she was his age. Or was she younger? Yes, two years younger, in fact. She was just six then, which she knew because it was just before Pearl Harbor, and her left became one of endless warfare.

It was only in recent years that she understood what the movie was really saying. It had a moral, a lesson, one that she now desperately wished she’d heeded. She considered trying to explain that to the boy, to hope that he could learn from the story and not make the same mistakes.

Instead, she adopted a conspiratorial tone and asked, “Want to know a secret?”

The boy nodded, his curiosity piqued.

“The story isn’t over yet. You see… the monster comes back.”

And just like that, all the wonder and awe came flooding back into the boy’s face.

“He does? He survives?”

“He sure does! Not only that, but he’ll go on to make friends and even find a bride!”

“He gets married?!” The kid looked shaken to his core. “He gets a happy ending?”

She put a finger to her lips and said, “You’ll find out tomorrow. Off to bed now.”

He ran off, as if going faster would get him to the next story sooner. As she watched him join the other children in the patients’ barracks, the old medic knew she would have to come up with a new ending for _The Bride of Frankenstein_. It felt like sacrilege: fudging some details was one thing, but to change the story itself?

Well, she reasoned, it’s not like James Whale himself was faithful to Mary Shelley’s source material when he made the films. Besides, she was the storyteller, so the stories were now hers: to tell and change as she saw fit, to pass them along to kids like these. It was a wonderful thought, that she might have some small, positive legacy to leave behind. Even if it couldn’t outweigh the rest. 

So she vowed to give them a grand finale. Something to remember and savor in the years to come, long after she was gone. Which would have to be soon. 

Two days earlier, the rebels had surrendered to the government, finally ending the war. This outpost would be shuttered, and the patients who still needed care would be relocated to a new facility created by the UN, who had established a peacekeeping organization. Some of the staff and volunteers would join up, while others would either go home or find another war. 

There were always other wars. If human nature didn’t see to that, then her old friends would.

But she knew she couldn’t keep chasing after conflict after conflict. She wasn’t getting any younger, as her hands and her back could attest. She never expected to still be going after nearly twenty years. When she’d started, she figured she’d keep going until she caught a stray bullet or stepped on a landmine, and she was lucky. Too lucky. She knew she would have to make a choice, rather than wait for the world to choose for her.

Then again, maybe it already had. There was a good chance she was already stranded, as the energy crisis had made most long-distance transportation prohibitive. There was talk of an oil substitute being developed by the Czech biologist Kio Marv, but she hadn’t heard any headway on that front.

To make matters worse, there was all that talk about the world’s computers going crazy at midnight just because some engineers and programmers never considered that they might all live to see the new millennium. The idea amused her, as someone who grew up with movies about supercomputers like _Colossus: The Forbin Project_ and _2001: A Space Odyssey_. Here they were, finally on the cusp of a new millennium (depending on who you asked), and the real HAL 9000 programs weren’t going to turn on humanity. No, the damn things might just stop working! Arthur C. Clarke never saw that coming, did he?

So maybe... she had no choice. Maybe she couldn’t forge new papers, run halfway across the globe to another conflict, and insinuate herself with some tiny offshoots of the Peace Corps or Médecins Sans Frontières until it was time to run again. Maybe she would have to stay, set down roots, care for her patients, even allow herself to have friends in the years she had left. 

It didn’t feel safe. But then, what did? She’d given up any hope for security, but perhaps… perhaps she had no choice but to accept being content for once in her life.

She decided to sleep on it, heading back to her tent for the night. She looked forward to curling up with a medical journal the Peace Corps had shipped in. Anything they had would be years outdated, but that was fine: a woman who’d cut herself off from her society for this long had lots of catching up to do.

She pulled back the tent flap, and a familiar voice stopped her dead.

“Evening, Doctor Castle.”

The invader wasn’t a local. His impeccable suit made that much clear even if she hadn’t recognized him. His black hair had flecks of gray, his face displayed long smile lines and wrinkles across brow, and his mustache was gone, but besides all those changes, Donald Anderson barely looked like he’d aged ten years, much less twenty. He sat at her table, flipping through the new-old books waiting for her. Insult to injury, that.

Don gave her a genial smile and asked, “Sorry, it is ‘Castle’ now, right? ‘Wilma Castle?’ Or are you still going by ‘Veronica Corman’ or ‘Glenda D. Wood?’ Heh, you always picked such great names. I always liked ‘Betty I. Gordon’ best. Can you guess why?”

She could. She wanted to tell him it was because she was the one who sat him down for a whole marathon of Burt I. Gordon films like _The Amazing Colossal Man_ and _Earth Vs. The Spider_. But she found herself unable to speak or even move. She just stood there, petrified like a victim of the Monolith Monsters. 

Looking at her kindly, he said, “Don’t feel too bad. You did your best to cover your tracks. But even when you worked for the CIA, you were never really a spy. Not like us.”

Collecting her wits, she stepped across the precipice of her violated shelter. The tent flap fluttered closed behind her.

She asked, “Zero sent you?”

“Zero doesn’t know I’m here.” His earnestness took her off guard. “No one does. I’m here on my own. I just... wanted to see an old friend.”

“Friend” evoked countless hours of companionable seclusion. Squeezed into the plane above Tselioyarsk, radio support for their man in the field. The lab under Carlsbad Caverns, sharing research and dreaming about a better world. Drinking good beer and better whiskey, discussing favorite films late into the night. So many years and so many gray hairs ago, although more in her case than his.

“You look great, Don,” she said, as she slumped across from him on her cot. “Still with DARPA?”

He nodded. “Chief of Operations now. We’ve just secured a plum deal with ArmsTech, so I’m doing pretty good.”

“Quite a feather in your cap.” The words came out more sarcastic than she meant. “I’m happy for you. Really.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“Only because I don’t know why you’re here.”

He looked at her evenly. 

“Jane, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. You know why.”

She bristled at her real name. She’d hoped to go the rest of her life without ever hearing “Jane Clark” again. But that, like the idea of this day never happening, was just a lovely dream.

“I’m not going back,” she said, and she knew what it meant to say it. She would never get off that bed, never save another life or tell another story. This was where she’d die, but she’d be damned if she didn't die on her own terms. “If you’re going to shoot me, shut up and do it.”

“Whoa, hold on, Jane...”

“Don’t call me that.”

““Dr. Clark… no, _Para-Medic_ , listen to me. You know me. I’m no killer. I’m not even armed.”

“You’re lying,” she said, her fingers digging into the cot. “I can see the bulge from your coat. It’s a great suit, but the tailoring didn’t take the weapon into account. As if you would ever be without a gun in the middle of a war zone. Isn’t that right... Mr. Sigint?”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handgun, sleek and futuristic. He held it by the barrel, displaying the weapon, letting her see both sides as if showing off the model.

“It’s not a gun. The rounds are tranquilizer darts, my own design. I call it the Hush Puppy Mk. 1.”

“Cute.”

“Here, hold onto it if it makes you feel any better,” he said, stretching across the table and handing her the gun. She accepted it with apprehension, and was surprised by how light it felt in her hand. It was clearly made out of some kind of polymer, not metal. “It’s just for my own protection out there. Like I told you, I’m no killer.”

Pretty rich coming from a CIA Agent turned arms developer. But, really, when it came to people like them, who didn’t lie to themselves to cope?

She sighed. “Why now, Donald? Why not come after me all those years ago if you knew where I was?”

“Why would we? You weren’t a prisoner. You’re one of us. You could have told us instead of running off.”

She wondered if that was true. And she wondered if he really believed that himself.

She remembered her last day in the lab, peeling off bloody rubber gloves. Bundling up her scrubs, soaked with her sweat and others’ fluids, tossing them in a hazmat container to be incinerated. She’d let the cleanup crew handle the viscera, getting the lab ready for the next unfortunate test subject. Some new soldier brought in by Zero, probably with the same promises of idealism and advancement he’d used to woo her to the FOX Unit back in 1963.

Back when there was a FOX Unit. Before the Patriots. Before Cipher.

She’d tried not to think about it, tried to harden herself after the third, the tenth, the thirtieth subject died in agony, painting the lab their own personal shades of red. Each death was supposed to serve a purpose; each failure a stepping stone to success. Someday the parasites and drugs and radiation would harmonize to align and alter their genes. They would. It would be worth the cost.

If she could only control the parasites, harness them, the genetic potential was limitless. Not to create another Snake or another Cobra Unit, to force Zero’s grand vision on the world, but for all mankind. Free from cancer, immune to disease, even resistant to radiation when the bombs finally fell.

That’s what she’d told herself. She’d held onto it for as long as she could. But at a certain point, she’d stopped thinking about it altogether. She hadn’t even noticed as she’d shriveled inside, robotically filling out another medical report, making notes for next time, and the time after that. If she’d felt anything, it was anger at her failure, and hatred. For herself, for Zero, and for her subjects, with their flawed bodies and foolishness to be lured into this slaughterhouse. She grew to hate her own victims.

Then came Saturday, and on Saturdays, after a hot shower and thorough sterilization, she underwent the procedures for go off-base. She dressed in nondescript street clothes, issued herself false identification papers, took a wad of cash, and rode into Roswell for dinner and a movie--in a real theater, not the tiny screening room Zero created for her, with a pitiful selection of the same reels she’d seen over and over again. Nor did she care to sit through any of Zero’s collection, as all he cared about were war movies and spy thrillers. 

She hadn’t heard of the film that was playing at the Yucca Theater that night, but with a title like _Parts: The Clonus Horror_ , it seemed right up her alley. And it would have been, had she seen it at a different time in her life. Her younger self would have loved such seeing such an awkward, clumsy, yet earnest sci-fi thriller that desperately strove to be ranked alongside _Logan’s Run_ and _Soylent Green_. If only she could have seen it years earlier, at least before the events of 1972. But this was 1979, and she had no idea what to expect as she sat in the back row with a fresh bucket of popcorn, waiting for the feature presentation.

When it was over, she didn’t move. She stayed seated in the back, still holding her popcorn, which had been barely touched and had gone cold. As she waited for everyone else to shuffle out, she heard the murmuring of the patrons. About failed experiments. About whether clones had rights, or even souls. About good intentions versus evil deeds. About children being created, raised, brainwashed, slaughtered, and harvested for the benefit of others. But mostly about whether or not the film was even good.  
It wasn’t. But that didn’t matter. Even bad movies can leave an impression. Even shoddy stories can touch a heart or a nerve. 

She’d waited. And waited. And when she was finally alone, she broke. Everything she’d held in, everything she thought she’d buried, it burst out of her and bled, just like... 

Just like...

“I had enough,” she told Donald, simply. “I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

He nodded, and reached over to touch her hand. To someone who had avoided any human contact aside from working on the operating table, she felt both alarmed and comforted by his touch. 

He said, “You did what you had to do. No one blamed you for that.”

Old guilt welled up in her for leaving. When all was said and done, they were still a team. They were friends.

“So... Zero wasn’t angry?”

“Honestly? I think he saw it coming.”

She smirked, marveling at her own naiveté. 

“I should have known. He always had an eye for the future.”

“What, you think he didn’t have contingencies in case anything happened to us? Me, I could die tomorrow, and there would already be a plan to continue my work.”

She wondered why the thought didn’t depress him, that he could be replaced so readily, that he was essentially redundant. But at present, she had a far more pressing question. 

“So who’s been carrying on mine?”

“In a way, you have. Or rather, ‘Dr. Clark’ has. As far as the world at large knows.”

“Why would the world at large know anything? I thought the point of being in a shadowy secret organization was that no one knew who we were.”

“No one did, not exactly. But people talked, you know. Rumors swirled about a ‘Dr. Clark’ making incredible strides in genetic research, so Zero wanted to nip that in the bud. He farmed out your research to different teams across the globe... using different Cipher fronts, of course. It stayed compartmentalized, no one knew exactly what they were part of, only that some mysterious ‘Dr. Clark’ was the brains behind the operation. Now, thanks to certain technological advancements, we’re able to compile the data and incorporate it into our work. It’s all thanks to a Dr. Clark no one knows. And you know the funniest part? Most just assume you’re a man!”

“Of everything you’ve just said, Don,” she shook her head, “that’s the least surprising part.”

“No, but that’s just it. As Dr. Clark, you’re not a man, nor are you even a woman. You’re a ghost, Jane. A myth. A legend.”

“A legend,” she scoffed, then chuckled. Of course she is. Of course that’s what Zero made of the pieces of herself she’d left behind. It’s exactly what he tried to do with another defect from their organization. Smiling at the audacity of it all, she said, “You and Zero… you turned me into another Big Boss.”

Donald didn’t laugh. His manner sobered, and he looked away.

“That’s... actually what I came here to talk about. It’s Big Boss… he...”

And she knew. She didn’t know how, but she knew.

“No.” 

“Jane…”

She shook her head, and her hands followed suit. 

“No, it’s not true. You’re wrong. Or you’re lying. I don’t know what’s worse, but I know you can’t kill him. And god knows you’ve tried! We’ve tried, haven’t we, Don?! We gave it everything we had, and he wouldn’t stay down!”

Don glanced nervously to and from the tent flap, saying, “Jane, please, you gotta calm down…”

“Why?! If you’re not lying and if you’re not wrong, then why should I calm down?! We won! Cipher is victorious! Why didn’t you bring some champagne so we...?!”

“STOP.”

He hadn’t shouted. The one word wasn’t loud. But it was firm, it was sharp, and it shut her down. She had never seen him act that way before. In that moment, she understood how the somewhat goofy gun nut she used to know could lead an entire wing of the government’s defense research. He commanded authority. And in that moment, he could have commanded her attention.

But then, as quickly as it appeared, all the strength in him faded away. He sank into the chair, looking more like the man she know… while also looking older than his years. And she knew he wasn’t lying. 

“I’m sorry, Jane.”

And just like that night, sitting alone in the back row of the Yucca Theater, Dr. Clark wept. She mourned for Jack, the man she sometimes still thought of as “Snake,” but never “Big Boss.” That man was a stranger to her, and thus she mourned for those lost years too. 

As soon as she was able, she asked, “When did it happen? How?”

“Last week. On Christmas Eve. As for how, that’s... complicated...”

Bitterness burned inside her. Bitterness and self-loathing.

“Was it…” she had to stop herself from saying “us” or “you.” Instead, she asked, “Was it Zero?”

“No, it wasn’t any of us,” Donald said hastily, then hesitantly. “It was... one of the clones.”

The bitterness turned to cold horror.

“Which one? George? Or Elias?”

“… it was David.”

No. No, that wasn’t possible. 

David. The inferior clone, who’d taken all of Jack’s weaker attributes. The one Zero had wanted discarded. The one who’d grabbed her finger with his stubby digits and looked her in the eyes with intensity and love, who’d wept as he was taken away by Zero’s XO, the skull-faced man, to be raised in anonymity, far away from her.

Donald opened his briefcase and produced a series of grainy surveillance photos, classified documents, psych profiles, a full dossier. A young man in fatigues stared up at her from the file, a pistol in his hands, a familiar green bandanna above his eyes. The same one she’d seen on his “father” decades before, taken from the woman who’d always been at the heart of everything they’d done.

The files told the story of the boy becoming a soldier, who—by some combination of manipulation and sick coincidence—was sent by the US Government to kill his own father. The photos were snapshots of carnage: the young man mowing down soldiers with a personal arsenal. Skulking in alleyways and hiding in boxes like some kind of thief. Trudging through swamps. Snapping a man’s neck. Standing covered in filth and blood. Towering over the scorched body of an old man she almost wouldn’t have recognized were it not for the eyepatch. 

Despair washed over her. This was her child. Her creation, whose existence she’d fought for, who she’d abandoned. This boy who was made to be a figurehead for a new era of world peace, now an instrument of death. A murderer who killed the greatest man she ever knew, a man whose trust she had violated to bring this child into existence.

A monster, made by monsters. Made by her.

Donald broke the grave silence. “This has changed everything, Jane. The clone has gained international attention. His ascent on the global stage is certain. This is our mess. All of us, me and Zero included. We need to atone for our mistakes. And we need your help, Jane. We need you back.”

She’d been waiting for those words. She wanted to say no, but her eyes returned to the killer in the photos.

“You said you don’t need me anymore.”

“We made do, but there’s no substitute for the real thing. We need to take your research to the next level, to prepare for a world that can deal with threats like this. It’s time to make the Gene Soldier Project a reality.”

She paled. “Damn it, you know the parasite therapy is too unreliable!”

He eagerly produced another file, handing it to her with urgency.

“It won’t be like that anymore. DARPA has made incredible progress with nanotech: microscopic machines that can mimic the capabilities of the parasites, only 100% controllable by us. Theoretically, anyway. See, that’s why we need your brilliant mind. Only you can unlock the genetic puzzle that will make this happen."

"Donald, I’ve been out of the field for fifteen years. I’ve fallen so far behind."

"No, that’s just it. You were ahead of your time. If anything, science is only now catching up to you. This is your time."

A chance to do it again. To do it right. To make sure that all those deaths and failures weren’t in vain. That even Jack’s death could mean something. But she couldn’t… not her...

She said, "Get one of those other scientists. You know, the ones whose work you’ve stolen to make your own Dr. Clark. Surely there must be somebody?"

Donald frowned, then admitted, with some strange calculation in his words, "There is a geneticist who comes close. Naomi Hunter. I think you knew her brother. You remember Frank Jaeger, don’t you?"

The ashen-haired boy. The one that Snake had brought in from San Hieronymo. The one she’d studied like a lab rat and then bonded with like a son. The one that Snake… that Jack took away to keep him safe. From her.

Don waved a hand and said, “No, Dr. Hunter is too young. In a few years, she could be your equal. But there’s no time. We need you.”

That word: “need.” Hearing it made her realize that she truly had made her choice, even before she stepped into this tent. 

“These children need me, Don. Not you. I’m not going anywhere.”

"We’ll send supplies and doctors, better than anything you have now. Just come with me for a week. See what we have to offer.”

He wasn’t speaking like a businessman trying to sweeten a merger deal, nor like a spy giving an asset an offer they couldn’t refuse. It was almost as if he was pleading for an old friend to come back, to make the right decision.

The truth was, she wanted to see what they were offering. But she knew that, if she saw whatever it was, she wouldn’t want to leave. He was offering a shot of the finest scotch to a recovering alcoholic. Realizing that was enough to harden her resolve, and now it was her turn to shut him down. 

“The answer is no, Don. Now please... leave. Before I call for help.”

He sighed, defeated, but she wasn’t ready to relax just yet. He picked up the photos and documents, returning them to the file which he then put back into his briefcase. He was about the close the lid when he stopped and looked up. 

“May I at least have the Mk. I back?”

“I think,” she said, wrapping her hands around the small handle and putting her finger on the trigger, “I’ll keep it with me. As a reminder of you. And better times.”

He nodded, as if expecting this answer. He didn’t even seem disappointed. 

“That’s all right,” he said, reaching into his briefcase and unlatching a false bottom. “I still have my Mk. II.”

Her blood froze. She pulled the trigger, hearing a dull click. The gun, unlike the new one in Donald’s hand, was empty.

“I’m sorry, Jane,” he said, aiming at her leg and pulling the trigger. She expected to hear a loud bang and see a flash of gunpowder, but there was just a whisper followed by a sharp pinprick in her left thigh. “It’ll be alright, I promise. Once you see him, then you’ll—”

He kept talking, but she wasn’t listening. As her legs went out from under her, the words of Dick Powell as Phillip Marlowe played out in her dimming thoughts: “A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom.”

She couldn’t remember the rest.

***

When she awoke, she thought she must still be dreaming. 

She was sitting in a luxurious leather recliner, the kind with holsters for drinks and snacks at the side. A jumble of lights and colors, too bright and vivid for her to handle in her state, filled her foggy vision. Her ears were filled with the muffled sounds of indecipherably cheery music, as if she were at an underwater carnival. 

Then the sights and sounds came into focus, and she saw them. Four old friends from her past, marching single-file across a painted background, singing a song she knew by heart:

“LET’S ALL GO TO THE LO-BBY, LET’S ALL GO TO THE LO-BBY,”

There they were: the dancing cartoon refreshments--chocolate bar, popcorn box, candy box, and soda pop cup--all in the same gloriously grainy film quality she remembered. 

“LET’S ALL GO TO THE LO-BBYYYYY…!”

She pulled herself out of the recliner, her body begging her to return to its comfort, while the old jingle played on with merry indifference. To the sides of the massive screen, were shelves tightly packed with thousands of VHS tapes, slim Laserdisc sleeves, and boxes of some things called DVDs, all meticulously organized by genre and alphabetized. And beyond them, a sliver of white beamed through an unassuming pair of double doors. 

“... TO GET OURSELVES A TREAT!”

She opened the doors, and was bathed in searing white light. Before her stretched out a massive laboratory the size of a warehouse. Everything was silver and white, sterile as a Kubrick set. She saw dormant computers, blank screens, counter tops, shelves, beakers, test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, examining tables, surgical robots, and maybe other pieces of equipment and technology that were beyond her understanding. She felt like a woman out of time, stranding in some alien future, which made the other areas of the lab appear bizarrely incongruous. 

To her right was a bathroom with a spacious shower, enticing her with the promise of steamy, pressurized water any time she wanted. God, how long had it been since she last had a hot shower? To her left was a kitchen, filled with every luxury appliance imaginable, so clean and well-stocked she half expected to see Julia Child pop out of the fridge. Even at a glance, she knew there would be enough in there to feed the refugees for months. She felt disgust at the waste of it all, even as her stomach rumbled. And she knew why, as her nostrils were filled by a familiar, buttery smell.

“DELICIOUS THINGS TO EAT! THE POPCORN CAN’T BE BEAT!”

There, right by the entrance to the screening room, was a popcorn machine straight out of a county fair. It was adorned with red and white stripes, with a little cartoon kernel-man in a military beret on the side. A “colonel,” of course. Hilarious.  
Was this it? Was this the thing that was meant to be so enticing, so seductive, that Donald saw fit to kidnap her and take her halfway across the globe to wherever the hell she was? Not that it wasn’t impressive, she’d admit. He certainly went all-out to customize an entire playground for a dozen of the world’s top scientific minds, as if handing her the keys to her own personal Disneyland. Except she suspected that those keys only worked to let one inside, not out. And besides, what kind of sick mind would think that she wanted this? To be trapped in her own, tailor-made Magic Kingdom, as its prisoner and sole occupant?

Then again, she realized with mounting dread, maybe she wasn’t alone. In the center of the room was a containment unit, a sleek coffin that she had assumed was as empty as everything else. But the lights were blinking at the control panel, and the little window was frosted with interior condensation. 

Something was inside. Something was waiting for her. 

“Welcome back, Dr. Clark. I do hope you like what we’ve done with the place.”

She knew that voice, with the same dapper British accent she remembered. He sounded exactly the same, even filtered through speakers. She turned and saw his face filling the entire movie screen, looming hugely like the boss in Chaplin’s _Modern Times_. The same scarred Joseph Cotton face she remembered; he hadn’t aged. Some other scientific advancement they’d achieved in her absence, no doubt.

“Hello, Zero.”

“Come now, no need to be formal. We’re old friends, after all.”

“The last old friend I met shot me. Where is Donald?”

“Hard at work. It cost valuable time to retrieve you. He’s very sorry, but we all agreed that you needed to see this for yourself.”

“What, this grotesque resort? Or do you mean the poor bastard inside that pod? Who is it, Zero? Who’s the unfortunate guinea pig this time?”

“Your patient,” Zero responded with sober solemnity, “is the survivor of our child’s rampage.”

The capsule opened with a hiss, mist pouring thickly onto the spotless tile floor. When she saw the mangled body inside the refrigerated unit, she initially thought his hair had been frosted over. But no, it was naturally silver, had been since he was a child. He must be in his forties, but thanks to genetic tampering, he looked scarcely older than the man who had done this to him.

“Frank...” she whispered.

Frank Jaeger. The boy Jack brought in from San Hieronymo. The child soldier, traumatized and broken and molded into a killer. The one she’d treated as a patient and studied as a specimen. The one who was unresponsive to stimuli until she sat him down with a few reels from her collection. _Tarantula_. _Earth Versus the Spider_. _Them_. _Dracula_. _Frankenstein_.

He’d sat through them all, still as a statue. Then she tried something different: comedy. She chose her favorite, the Peter Sellers classic _A Shot in the Dark_. At first, nothing registered. Then, when Clouseau’s hand got caught in the spinning globe, the tiniest smile emerged on Frank’s, barely more than a smirk. When Inspector Dreyfus stabbed himself with a letter opener, the smile became a grin. As the movie went on, life glowed in Frank’s eyes. And once, just once, he laughed. A single, joyous, high-pitched laugh, as if he were any other normal boy of fifteen.

For years, she wondered what became of him. She wondered what he might have become had not Big Boss taken her away, after she’d violated his trust and his body. She pleaded with him, begged him to see reason for the boy’s sake. He deserved a chance at a normal life.

“Normal?!” he’d snarled, a fire blazing in his one good eye. “There’s no normal for any of us. He’s a soldier. War is all he’s ever known. It’s his purpose. And he deserves better than to be in the hands of people like Zero. And you.”

_Now look at you_ , she thought. This is how you ended up. A life of war and death, only to land right back here.

“We’ve been able to keep him alive,” Zero said, “but only barely. We’ve reached the limit of what we can achieve.”

She caught the whiff of bullshit through the screen. “Why do you care about him?”

“The treatments that could save his life have yet to be developed. Those that exist would kill a normal man. Frank Jaeger, however, is a miracle of genetic engineering. He may survive the process. These are therapies only you can provide, with the resources only we can provide. The knowledge gained will save millions.”

She stared at the man in the chamber, at the tubes that fed in and filtered out his fluids, the respirator that breathed for him, this living corpse caught between life and death.

She knew that Frank was no innocent. She could only imagine the things he’d done under Big Boss’s command. But when she looked at him now, she didn’t see the killer they’d made. She saw the child again. The child who’d laughed.

“If I refuse?”

“Then you’re free to go,” Zero said. “We’ll continue without you. We won’t be able to save him, but we shall study him for years to come. We will not allow his suffering to be in vain.”

Hooked up to these machines, no doubt, to be poked and prodded and dissected but never allowed to die. Not until they’d exhausted his usefulness, a torture that might last decades.

Walking away would damn him; if she stayed she could offer him a chance. A slim one, perhaps, but a chance just the same.

“If I can save him...” Her tongue darted out to wet her suddenly dry lips. “Will he be free to leave?”

“Certainly. You can walk him out yourself. We’ll have more than enough to work with once you’re done. Assuming you succeed.”

“And the refugees? What about my work for them?”

Another screen popped on, showing the medical camp. Where was the camera? How long had Zero been watching her? Did it even matter? She saw men and women in clean white coats, scrubs, and fatigues, some carrying supplies, others examining the patients, several more arriving in jeeps.

“Your patients are in good hands. Is that acceptable?”

She felt a pang of something she couldn’t nail down. Jealousy, regret, guilt? She wished she could be there, especially with the resources Zero was now providing. She wondered if the children would miss her and her stories. How many would remember them? Would they ever wonder what happened to her? And what about the boy? The one she had promised to tell some grand lie about the monster’s happy ending? None of Zero’s dark resources would ever be able to give him that. 

It seemed she’d spent her whole life abandoning people who needed her. Her parents. Her husband. The clones, both the twins and the third. Zero and Donald. With time, would she have abandoned Frank as well?

No. 

Not this time. No more running. It was her fault that Frank was here, in this condition. It was her mistakes which put him in this pod. It was her work which could get him back out. She could save him, free him. At great cost, yes, but she could.

She pressed the button to seal the chamber, letting the young man rest in solitude. Then she turned to Zero on the monitor.

She asked, “Where do we start?”

The scar through Zero’s eye crinkled as he smiled. The lab came alive in a symphony of electric whirs, clicks, and beeps. Screens popped on, circuit boards lit up, fans started spinning, and in the kitchen, a compartment opened in the counter to present a chilled bottle of champagne and one delicate glass. 

“We start,” said Zero, holding up his own champagne on the screen, “with a toast. To Mr. Jaeger, and to the New Millenium. Happy New Year, Dr. Clark.”

She had almost forgotten the date, had all but assumed she’d been asleep for days or even longer since her abduction. But there it was, January 1st, 2000, listed on every electronic device she could see. On the digital wall clock, on the movie screen under Zero’s face, on the console of Frank’s containment pod, on the microwave in the kitchen... 

… and on the monitor of every single one of the lab’s computers, all of them running smoothly and efficiently. Just waiting on her orders to act. 

She took the drink. Then she got to work.

***

In the weeks after the turn of the new millennium, she studied the research of her phantom counterpart, the other “Dr. Clark,” combining it with Arms Tech and DARPA’s advancements in nanotech, genetic engineering, and—most intriguingly—cybernetic enhancements and prostheses. Everything she’d ever dreamed about, the ideas her colleagues and teachers dismissed as stuff out of bad science fiction... now it was all within reach.

Part of her had hoped she wouldn’t be up to the job. That she had fallen too far behind to understand, like a caveman studying a radio. She could abandon this task and run with only the clothes on her back and the guilt in her heart. She was used to the guilt. It fit her like a pair of comfortable old shoes. 

If only she felt powerless enough to surrender. But she didn’t. Looking at this data, she was as far from powerless as she’d ever been. She could do this. Only she could do this. This is what she was born to do.

“I’ll save you, Frank,” she whispered to the coffin. “No matter how long it takes.”

And so began the final three years of Dr. Jane Clark’s life.

She spent her days on a strict schedule. Shower, light breakfast, straight to work on her research. Lunch, straight to work on Frank. Dinner, followed by a movie and bed. She didn’t know that she would never again see the light of day, or breathe in fresh air, or feel the soil beneath her feet. She’d never eat out at a restaurant, or heal an injured stranger, or enjoy a day in a park. 

Aside from Frank, who wasn’t the greatest conversationalist at present, she would never even speak to another human being again. Not that it mattered. The only people to whom she gave any thought were her patients and colleagues in the refugee camp, but even that dwindled after the first year.

She didn’t miss any of these things, not really. She’d been social once. There’d been a time when she’d chatted people’s ears off, but that woman had been washed down the drain along with the viscera of her failures. She truly had everything she needed now. She had her work, she had her films, she had someone to care for and to heal. And when it was all over, her work would help more people than she could have saved in any war.

More than ever, she had purpose. She held onto that notion during the long weeks of trial and error, watching Frank’s body reject round after round of nanomachines until they finally took control. The frustration was nothing to the exhilaration of being able to examine, understand, and even rewrite his incredible genetic code, unlocking the mystery and opening the door to replicate these treatments on anyone. Anyone! Everyone! 

But not until she’d saved Frank. His well-being, his salvation, was all that mattered. She held onto the elation of the world-shaking implications of this treatment as she grafted the exoskeleton to his body, one piece at a time. She knew he could survive this procedure now, knew how to keep him alive. 

But god help her, she couldn’t prevent the pain.

Even pumped full of drugs, he would thrash and cry out as the machines fused the limbs and armor onto his bones, burrowing into his marrow, threading each and every one of his nerve endings into a whole new nervous system of fiber optics and electricity. He snarled like a starving animal. He shrieked like a dying child. And when she fed him all the sedatives and painkillers she dared to administer, he fell silent as a toy whose batteries had run out.

She wanted to tell him how sorry she was that she couldn’t make it painless. Someday she would beg for his forgiveness when it was all over, when she allowed him to awaken and see his new body. Maybe he wouldn’t forgive her. Maybe he’d kill her. But he would live, and millions of others would benefit from her work and his suffering. Those thoughts kept her going.

But when she was alone, doubts surfaced. And when she went to watch movies, their escapism proved less and less effective. 

She had given up watching any recent films from the years of the absence. New movies (which encompassed any from within the past fifteen years, as far as she was concerned) didn’t make sense to her. They were too loud, too violent, too obsessed with effects over substance. And all the remakes! So many gory, gross remakes of classics she loved! What, weren’t the originals good enough anymore?

And yet… deep down, she knew she was hiding from the real truth. She knew that she probably would have loved these new versions of _The Thing_ , _The Fly_ , and _The Blob_ if she had watched them when they were released. She and cinema grew up together, evolved together, until she abandoned the movies just like she had with everyone else. Her tastes had remained stagnant, while the movies moved on without her. 

So she sought solace in the old films of her past, but even they had lost their magic, like food losing its flavor. She kept watching, hoping to find something that could make her feel clean again. New again. Young again. Something that could pull her out of the pain and fill her with awe, with joy, with wonder and hope. But it would never happen. She would never again be that little girl watching Frankenstein for the first time. She was just an old woman, passing the time.

And time, indeed, passed.

Three years they spent together. Three years of trial and error, of screams and silence, meals and movies. And finally, the end was in sight.

It was May 15th, 2003. They would be finished soon. 

According to the readouts, Frank had been thriving in the VR sessions. The testing chamber that Zero had provided proved to be far more useful than she would have guessed, both in terms of diagnostics for the prostheses and for Frank’s physical therapy. Within months, he went from barely being able to walk to performing feats that would rival Olympic athletes. 

Except it wasn’t Frank himself accomplishing these feats. Not exactly. His mind was on autopilot, the cocktail of sedatives allowing him no more consciousness than would be required to absorb the VR training scenarios. He had no will of his own, no awareness for anything beyond the helmet on his head. 

That, she vowed, would change soon. He was almost ready. The only mystery left to solve was in the nerve connections. If she left him in this condition, he would be mostly functional, but he would frequently suffer from painful seizures. That would be no way to live, not after all he’d endured. 

She knew how to solve this issue, and that within a matter of weeks, this would all be over. She was so close, so damn close. And soon, she would revive him, ease him back into wakefulness. And then, if he was willing, they would leave together.

So why didn’t she feel satisfied? Why wasn’t she happy?

Because in a larger sense, she failed. The therapies and advancements which had given Frank new life would not be applicable to anyone else. Any other human body would reject these enhancements just as violently as they had with the parasites. After all, Frank was the sole survivor of the Perfect Soldier program, which altered his DNA so drastically that he might not even be technically considered human anymore. For all its real-world applications, she might as well have been rehabilitating a unicorn. 

No, for others to utilize these therapies, she needed a perfect genetic template. She needed the DNA of an ideal specimen of physical, mental, and psychological prowess. She only knew of one, and he was gone. Dead, by the hand she had created. True, there were the clones, but their own DNA was useless because of their accelerated ageing. That, too, was her doing, much to her shame and regret. 

So much for her grand aspirations of helping mankind. And so much, too, for Zero and Donald’s dreams of making the Gene Soldier Project a reality. Well, serves them right. Perhaps one day, they’ll be able to put her work to good use, but until then, only one person will benefit from Frank’s ordeal: Frank himself. 

She could only hope that he’d forgive her. 

She was tired. Frank had another two hours of VR therapy ahead, just enough time to watch a movie. She chose an old favorite, the Roger Corman classic _It Conquered The World_ , with Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef. She hadn’t seen it since the night she tried showing it to Donald, who kept making fun of the laughable spaceship effects and the alien monster that looked like a deranged pickle. He never could look past the cheap production values, to appreciate the--

Suddenly, there was a distant explosion. 

The warehouse rocked as if kicked by a dragon, knocking equipment off the shelves and shattering vials and beakers. The popcorn stand toppled, scattering kernels and spilling oil dangerously near where sparks spewed from the VR control grid.

Clark was thrown out of the recliner, her head split against the corner of something hard and sharp. When she glanced up to see what it was, she found only darkness. Panic lanced her. The head injury. Was she blind? No, the darkness was environmental. The lights were out. The movie was cut off. The power was gone.

_No. Frank._

She scrambled out of the screening room, the theatre carpeting changing into the cold tile of the lab. Warmth spilled down her face, broken glass sliced her hand. Navigating blindly, she reached the VR chamber, prying open the doors that should have been shut with electromagnetic seals.

“FRANK!”

She reached out. The exoskeleton was cold to the touch, his breathing rapid as if he were in a fever. Without the power, his body couldn’t operate. She hadn’t yet enabled the independent power source, knowing it would cause him too much pain, that it would drive him berserk. She put his arm over her shoulder, preparing to lift hundreds of pounds of dead weight.

“Doc... tor...?”

The voice, hoarse from years of disuse save only for screams, crackled as if filtered through three radios. The VR helmet must still be on him.

“I’m here, Frank. Don’t try to talk,” she said, detaching wires from his body, “We’ve got to get you back inside the containment pod...”

He slumped, grew heavier in her arms.

“No. No pod.”

“You can’t survive outside...”

And then he did something that chilled her, something she hadn’t expected as she thought about begging him to help her, to help her help himself. He let out a single, horrible, hate-choked chuckle.

“If only... that were true. I’ve wanted to die... for so long. All these... years... trapped. Wishing I could speak...”

The horror of realization crept up her spine.

She said, “No. It’s impossible. You couldn’t have been... my god, you were aware the whole time? The whole time?”

“... begging you to stop... wishing I could kill you... hating you... then pitying you... when they told me...”

She couldn’t process it all, the nightmare was too overwhelming. She was damned. There would be no atonement, no forgiveness for what she had done. 

“Frank, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to save you. I wanted to give you a second chance. It was for you...”

“No,” he said, without hatred, stating simple fact. “It was for you. You never really knew me. I was just... who you wanted me to be. If you knew... the real me... you wouldn’t be trying to save me. All the people I’ve killed. All the people I’ve hurt. Naomi... Gustava... David...”

“David?!” she balked. Frank felt guilty about him? Had he suffered so deeply that he’d disconnected from reality itself? “Frank, David is the one who did this to you! He’s the killer here, not you!”

With what seemed like a great effort, Frank shook his head. “They lied to you... about him. He’s not like me. He’s... a hero. Even Big Boss knew that. That’s why he gave him the name...”

“Name? What name?”

“... Snake. Big Boss named him... Solid Snake.”

Snake. 

Despite what the clone meant to him, Jack gave David his own codename, the one he’d relinquished when he became Big Boss. Because David had earned the title. She knew that Jack would never see David as his son, would regard him only as a living embodiment of his own violation. Despite all this, David proved himself worthy of the most personal, intimate name Jack could bestow on any man. 

Did David betray that honor? Or was Frank right, and was David… was Snake… truly a hero after all? 

Questions, a dozen maddening questions, swirled in her mind. As if on cue, there was a loud crash, and the lab was awash in red lights. It Conquered The World continued on the movie screen, while the computer monitors popped back on to reveal the stern, ageless face of the man with all the answers. 

“Back-up power is on, Doctor,” Zero said, as if all this were but a trifle.

First things first, she asked, “What’s happening?”

“Intruders, it seems. They will be dealt with. What’s important is that you return the subject to his containment pod.”

“No...” Frank wheezed, as she carried him over to the chamber. “Listen...”

She asked, “Who are they, Zero? What do they want?”

“Doctor,” Frank said, his eyes pleading, “that’s not Zero.”

“What do you...” And she froze. She turned to the screen. Zero looked back at her, smiled… and flickered. 

It said, “I guess the cat’s out of the bag.”

And she understood. All the pieces fell into place, and she knew what this was. 

“You’re AI,” she said. “A computer. A machine. You’re no different from the fucking toaster.”

“Technically, Doctor, we are the toaster. We’re your entire kitchen, laboratory, lavatory, and so, so much more.”

She felt so stupid, as if she should have been able to figure it out sooner. In the end, she was still like that caveman failing to comprehend a radio. 

“Where’s the real Zero? Dead?”

The computerized mockery of Zero made a convincing approximation of human ruefulness.

“Essentially. His body lives, but poison robbed him of his mind many years ago. He created us, modeled us after his own brain patterns to carry on his work.”

“You created a phantom Zero just like the phantom Dr. Clark,” she said, and then the other shoe dropped. “That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” 

The image of Zero distorted, warping, pixels blinking out and being replaced, forming a new face altogether. It was a woman she almost didn’t recognize, and why should she? It was a version of her from another reality, a world where she never left, never exposed herself to years of the burning sun and harsh elements, where she spent her whole life preserved in a sterile lab, her face free from creases worn from stress, struggle, and conscience.

“Hello, Dr. Clark,” greeted the chipper young woman on the screen. “I’m Para-Medic. Nice to meet you.”

She gawked, “Para… Medic…?”

“As in a medic who comes in by parachute,” it said, parroting her own words from forty-one years prior. “Aren’t you going to ask me for my real name?”

“Who… what are you? And don’t say ‘I’m you’ or ‘Jane Doe’ or any of that bullshit. Tell me!”

“In a way, I’m your own clone, just psychologically rather than biologically. We studied your work, your methods, your techniques, your eating habits, even your taste in movies. And while you slept in our specially-prepared bed, hidden neural receptors mapped out your brain patterns.”

The bed. The lab. The theatre. It was all there to study her. She was the experiment, the specimen. She felt it’s what she probably deserved, that she had no right to feel so violated after what she did to Jack. And yet, all she felt was disgust and mounting fury.

She seethed, “Why?”

“Our original Dr. Clark algorithm had reached her limitations. We needed to become more. And now, thanks to you, we’re truly prepared for the coming years.” 

The image of Para-Medic faded away, the monitors displaying footage of soldiers--dozens, maybe more--training in VR units, receiving injections, and charging into battle wearing full-coverage fatigues. On their sleeves was a patch of a cartoon fox. 

The Para-Medic Thing narrated, “While you’ve been heard at work on Frank, we have utilized your advancements and your intellect to create the next generation of special forces. The Genome Soldiers will soon be ready for action, and it’s all thanks to you.”

She watched in stunned disbelief. It was impossible. They couldn’t have accomplished this, not without the DNA of a perfect specimen. Unless… 

No...

“You have his body,” she said. “Don’t you? Show me.”

The AI didn’t waste time asking her who she meant, or tried to play coy little games. It acquiesced, the screens displaying a naked old man, hooked up to life support equipment, floating in a bubbling suspension tank. His body bore dozens of old scars and fresh burns, rendering him almost unrecognizable if it weren’t for the patch over his right eye. 

Frank wheezed, “Boss…”

She whispered, “He’s still alive…?”

“I’ve been caring for him personally,” Para-Medic assured her. “Even though my program is housed here with you, I’m able to control the units that tend to our old friend at his location. Poor Jack.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was alive? Why lie to me?!”

The phantom Para-Medic looked at Clark with mild surprise, as if the old woman should know better. 

“You would have wanted to save him. We couldn’t have that. We like having him where he is. He’s finally back with us where he belongs, fathering a new generation of soldiers.”

“Bastards,” Frank growled. “Kill you all. Every last one.”

The phantom regarded Frank for the first time, as if he were an actual person and not some valuable piece of equipment. 

“Now, now, Frank. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to do that. Not when your sister is part of our team.”

The monitors showed a young woman in a lab coat and goggles studying a tissue sample inside a nondescript lab. Even besides her darker skin and straight brown hair, she in no way resembled Frank, who nonetheless looked at the surveillance footage of her with protective rage. 

The phantom explained, “She wanted to follow in your footsteps, so she joined FOX-HOUND. In fact, Dr. Clark, Naomi has since become one of the world’s leading geneticists to implement your own work. We couldn’t have done it without her.” 

Frank’s eyes flared.

“Naomi...”

“Look at him, Dr. Clark,,” beamed the phantom. “You should feel so proud. You have created something truly incredible: a perfect soldier, the ultimate assassin. His tests in the VR chamber have exceeded all projections.”

She shook her head, blaming herself for being such a fool. Physical therapy? Rehabilitation? How could she let herself believe that they were doing all this just to let him have a normal life? A part of her knew better. It was the part they gave a voice and a face, staring right back at her.

“So the part about us being able to leave,” she hazarded, “that was all a lie too?”

“Of course not,” the phantom said, doing a fine approximation of hurt. “We would never hurt you. We’re your children too. Once the interlopers are dealt with, you may go wherever you wish. A wonderful new world of peace and order is coming, and we want you to live out your days in it, to enjoy the world you’ve helped create.”

“And Frank?”

“We will release him too. But only after the final stage of treatment. Don’t worry, we can handle it from here.”

A hand gripped her arm. It was impossible, he shouldn’t be able to move, not without his suit’s power source. But somehow, through sheer force of will...

“They...” Frank struggled to form the words, “... they’re going to wipe my memory. You can’t...”

Now it was her eyes that flared at the warped mirror image on the screen.

The phantom said, “It’s for his own good. His mind’s been corrupted by too much trauma, too much pain, including that which you yourself inflicted. He’ll be better off this way. We’ll give him... purpose.”

That damn word. Whatever they thought they’d invoke in her, it backfired.

“Kill me,” he begged of her, looking like the child he was never allowed to be. “Please. Do it now.”

The woman on the screen laughed, the inhuman mirth resonating through one monitor, then another, then throughout the whole lab, a Greek chorus of mockery. Then all at once, they fell silent.

“She’d never do that, Frank,” it said. “She swore an oath. Now, Doctor, please sedate your patient.”

Dr. Clark looked at the man in front of her, this little boy in a man’s body, wearing skin of polymer and metal. She thought about David, the one who ruined Frank’s body, who was an unwitting pawn in all this. She wished she could meet him, to get his side of the story, to find out what his hopes and dreams were. But she knew she’d never get the chance, nor was she deserving. 

“Do it, Mother,” said the younger version of herself. “Do it, and be free.”

She would. 

She went to the medicine cabinet and produced a vial and a syringe, drawing the plunger up to its limit. She approached him and opened the suit with a mechanical whirr, exposing his clammy bare chest as he watched in anguished silence.

Determined, she held up the needle. 

“I’m sorry, Frank. But my child needs you.”

She looked again at the monitor, saw her own younger face smiling with approval. She stabbed the syringe into Frank’s chest, punching through bone and directly into his heart. Then, she slammed her bloody hand down onto the plunger, filling him with enough adrenaline to kill any other man.

He jerked up, his mouth wide in a silent scream, and the phantom balked, “What are you—?!” as she hit the switch at the base of Frank’s skull, activating the power source. Frank shrieked as electricity surged through his body, blue and white currents arcing over the suit, sparks burning into his flesh.

“What have you done?!” the phantom yelled in a dozen different voices. She could barely hear it over Frank’s screams as he contorted, ripping himself out of the chamber. For a moment, he looked like a toddler taking his first steps. Then the chestpiece closed itself shut, and the VR helmet slid shut over his face, cutting off his cries and replacing them with a harsh electronic growl like sounded like sheet metal being torn apart

A latch opened on the back, a hidden compartment unknown to her, and he pulled out a long blade droning with current. A high frequency blade, another of Donald’s old ideas made real.

He slashed at the wires, at the machinery, cutting himself free and slicing the chamber to pieces. The sword swung around and caught Clark in the left side, sliding between the ribs. The current surged through her as he ripped it out, leaving behind the stench of blood and burning meat. He didn’t know what he’d done, didn’t care. He was feral now.

Forcing herself to stay on her feet, she made her way to the fallen popcorn machine and grabbed the canister of oil. From the heft, there was plenty left inside. While Frank hacked at the walls, digging his own way out, Clark pushed through the agony to douse the consoles, the floors, and the walls with oil.

The screens screeched, “Doctor, no! Stop!” She wouldn’t. Not until she’d poured out the very last of it onto the damaged motherboard, where sparks flew from exposed wires. Flames erupted, singeing her hair, and she could smell the burning plastics and metals as her own image cried out.

“MOTHER! PLEASE!!!”

She watched it burn, the image flickering, begging her, with a look in its eyes that was almost as human and alive as the one she saw on David as he was taken away. Then, one by one, the screens cracked and shattered, and the voice through the speakers stopped begging and became erratic, its voice sounding less human, its words becoming incoherent, until finally it uttered its last, garbled message.

“Ssss… sss… saaaaaaav-eeeng… the… g-g-game… Snake…?”

Then it fizzled out. Only fire remained.

She turned to Frank, but he was gone. The door had been busted through, and beyond it, she thought she saw a figure in the distance wearing a cape or a cloak. Or maybe a duster. It didn’t matter. The damndest thing, though… she could have sworn it looked just like Lee Van Cleef.

Right, she remembered. The movie. It was still running. 

With the last of her strength, she made it into the theater, collapsing in the plush seat, and stared at the screen, catching the final minutes of _It Conquered The World_. Lee Van Cleef was dead, having sacrificed himself to stop the aliens he himself had helped. 

“He learned almost too late,” Peter Graves intoned, “that man is a feeling creature. And because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way. To make their own mistakes...” 

She kept watching as Graves continued his monologue, her ability to focus fading, but her lips mouthing the words she knew by heart. 

“There can’t be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And when men seek such perfection, they find only death… fire… loss… disillusionment… the end of everything that’s gone forward. Men have always sought an end to toil and misery, but--”  


The screen cut out, the backup power failing. She barely noticed, finishing the monologue in his stead.

“... but it can’t be given… it has to be achieved. There… is hope… but it has to come from… inside. From Man… himself.”

Then she sat, staring at the blank screen, lit only by the encroaching flames. Barely hearing the footsteps approaching from behind, she wondered what the next feature would be. Maybe a western? She’d like that. She wanted an old one, back before they turned gritty and revisionist. A classic, with black hats and white hats clearly defined, order prevailing over lawlessness. She’d always wanted to be a white hat; never managed, in a world made of grays, but wanted it so badly. 

She closed her eyes to imagine it. And for a second, from right behind her head, she swore she could hear the iron click of a revolver’s hammer.

And then there was silence. No fire. No smoke filling the air. Nothing in the air at all, except...

… except the faint scent of popcorn.

She opened her eyes. The theater was dark, and the screen glowed with grainy black footage. It flashed a mark she knew was a cigarette burn, indicating to the projectionist that it was time to change the reels.

“That was a sad one,” said the man sitting next to her. “But then, they usually are.”

There were no other seats in the theater, and yet there he was, sitting in one. In his lap, he had two red striped bags of popcorn. He offered her one.

She accepted it, confused. She didn’t know him, but he was familiar. Maybe she’d seen him in a file somewhere, long ago. He was tall and slender, with silver hair drawn back down to his neck, and narrow glasses on his face. She saw that one of the lenses was cracked, and behind it, blood trickled down his cheek.

Then she remembered. And she knew. He smiled kindly.

“I always preferred happy endings,” he said. “They’re fantasy, but isn’t that was movies are for?”

“Yes, they are,” she said. “Still, I wish it could have been different.”

“Everyone wishes that,” he said. “Even me. But it’s all right. The show goes on without us.”

The screen flickered, like it waited for something. For her, maybe.

She asked, “Do I have to go?”

“Do you want to?”

To both the man and the waiting screen, she said, “I think... I’d like to see what comes next.”

She wanted to ask so many questions. Would Frank survive? Would Jack ever be free? Would David be all right? What became of Elias and George? Would any of them find their happy endings? Would any good come out of all that she did?

“You’ll see,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Between you and me, I think we’re in for quite a show.”

The movie began. No credits, no title, just a blue image of a submarine drifting through arctic waters. A subtitle appeared, reading “ALASKA-BERING SEA,” and a gruff voice delivered the first lines through voiceover.

“The nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island in Alaska’s Fox Archipelago was attacked and captured by next-generation special forces being led by members of FOX-HOUND...”

She watched. She sat, enthralled, as the story unfolded. And before she knew it, she was leaning forward, feeling the way she had all those years ago.

With popcorn in her hands and wonder in her heart, Jane Clark watched it all.


End file.
